The first theatrical performance in the Wellcome Collection’s exhibition space and it’s a great start. It’s an excellent space - a red stripe from St George’s flag is ripped through the corrugated walls of the area, with three small stages depicting the Clegg family’s (not that one) front room, the chapel and the pub with Billy Bragg and his band on a fourth. It’s all presented promenade style.
Mick Gordon has written one of his ‘theatre essays’, asking questions through drama. And it’s a powerful piece. The violence of the abhorrent far right drowns out the desperate pleas from a disenfranchised white working class in a heavily multi-ethnic area.
Gordon isn’t afraid to strongly make these arguments on behalf of those who feel they don’t recognise their own home towns anymore, while skillfully demonstrating that the extreme politics of the fascist far right are never the answer. Oh, and there’s a love story in there too, but it’s lost in the polemic. Doesn’t matter.
All of the performances are excellent - in particular, young Shea Davis playing sensitive 14-year-old George, trying to find his own moderate identity among the anger and frustration of the adults around him and missing his thoughtful grandfather, through whom Gordon gives us a great storytelling device. Of the adults, David Kennedy is frightening and fragile as the shaven-headed bootboy Tony.
Director Christopher Haydon draws out the echoes of past, present and future resounding around the old and young characters.
From Bragg, songs like Home, Till Something Comes Along and All You Fascists have much of the power, anger and thoughtfully crafted lyrics that 25 years ago or more sparked political awareness in a generation.
Production information can change over the run of the show.
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